CHAUCER. 283 



Where many a tower and town thou may'st behold 

 That founded were in time of fathers old, 

 And many another dehtable sight: 

 And Saluces this noble country bight." 



The Pre-Raphaelite style of landscape entangles the eye 

 among the obtrusive weeds and grass-blades of the fore- 

 ground which, in looking at a real bit of scenery, we 

 overlook ; but what a sweep of vision is here ! and what 

 happy generalization in the sixth verse as the poet turns 

 away to the business of his story ! The whole is full of 

 open air. 



But it is in his characters, especially, that his manner 

 is large and free ; for he is painting history, though with 

 the fidelity of portrait. He brings out strongly the 

 essential traits, characteristic of the genus rather than 

 of the individual. The Merchant who keeps so steady a 

 countenance that 



" There wist no wight that he was e'er in debt," 



the Sergeant at Law, " who seemed busier than he was," 

 the Doctor of Medicine, whose " study was but little on 

 the Bible," — in all these cases it is the type and not the 

 personage that fixes his attention. William Blake says 

 truly, though he expresses his meaning somewhat clum- 

 sily, " the characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims are the char- 

 acters which compose all ages and nations. Some of the 

 names and titles are altered by time, but the characters 

 remain forever unaltered, and consequently they are the 

 physiognomies and lineaments of universal human life, 

 beyond which Nature never steps. Names alter, things 

 never alter. As Newton numbered the stars, and as 

 Linnaeus numbered the plants, so Chaucer numbered the 

 classes of men." In his outside accessaries, it is true, he 

 sometimes seems as minute as if he were illuminating a 

 missal. Nothing escapes his sure eye for the picturesque, 

 — the cut of the beard, the soil of armor on the buff 



